Ariosto's Poetry

Ludovico Ariosto’s poetry includes chivalric narrative, satire, and lyric verse, with Orlando Furioso at the centre of his literary work. In that poem, the pursuits of Orlando, Angelica, Ruggiero, and Bradamante cross and separate through a world of warfare, enchantment, and mistaken expectations. The narrator repeatedly suspends one story to resume another, making uncertainty part of the experience of reading. Ariosto’s satires use a more conversational mode to consider service, independence, and the pressures of social life. Across these forms, wit and shifts of perspective prevent appearances of grandeur from settling into unquestioned authority.